Bunji was knocking at a screen. It slid back.
“Bunji, is it you?” a very soft voice asked in the darkness.
“I and my Chinese friend,” Bunji replied. A light flashed on above their heads, and I-wan saw a short plump woman, no longer young, though still very pretty, standing looking out into the rain.
“Come in, come in,” she said warmly. She drew Bunji in by the sleeve.
“Oh, how wet you are!” she exclaimed. “Oh, is this I-wan? Akio has told me. I am so glad. Now take off your capes. Oh, and your wet shoes! Are your feet wet?” She stooped when Bunji kicked off his shoes and felt his feet. “Oh, your feet are wet! I have plenty of Akio’s socks here. You must change — oh, you naughty boys!”
She was so warm, so soft, so natural that she was wholly charming. I-wan felt vaguely comforted and for the first time in the day his heart lifted. They followed her into a lighted room, dry and warm with a glowing brazier. There by the brazier, reading a newspaper, sat Akio. It was an Akio that I-wan had never seen, a cheerful Akio who looked up to say, “Bunji, come in. And you are welcome, I-wan.”
He stirred himself as though they were guests.
“Sumie, two more cups, please!”
She had gone into the other room and now her soft voice called, “Yes, yes! I am bringing everything, so impatient man!” Akio laughed. I-wan had never seen him laugh before.
In a moment she came running in, her footsteps noiseless on the deep woven mats, in her hands the wine cups, and over her arm two pairs of clean dry socks. Here in the light she was prettier than ever in her kimono of deep apricot silk, patterned with white pear blossoms. Her hair was still black and dressed in the old Japanese butterfly style. Her cheeks were round and her lips soft and red.
“Now, then, here is everything. You pour them hot sake now, Akio — don’t be slow, Akio — and change your socks at once so you won’t catch cold, the two of you.”
In a few minutes they were all sitting about the brazier sipping hot sake and feeling warm and secure and free. Yes, there was a sort of freedom within these walls, whatever it was. Akio was talking, he who never talked at home. And Bunji was listening, attentively, without laughter. Sumie rose silently and fetched a small lacquered box and took out a piece of silk embroidery and fitting a thimble ring to her finger, she sat down again a little away from them all, and sewed. Every now and again she looked at Akio and filled his cup or mended the fire.
At first I-wan could not talk for feeling this secret life into which Bunji had opened the door. The room was Japanese. There was not a single touch in it of anything new or western. It might have been the home of any middle-class Japanese man — a few books in a low case of polished wood set on the floor, a simple flowered scroll hung in the alcove and beneath it a red lily and two long leaves springing from a bottle-shaped vase. The mats on which they sat were shining clean. Akio’s paper was the only touch of disorder. He had thrown it down when he began to talk — to talk, of all things now remote to I-wan, about war.
Afterwards I-wan could not remember what Akio had said. It did not matter. The miracle was Akio himself, talking quietly and freely in this warmed and lighted room. Inside the mold which I-wan had thought of as the man Akio, was this other living man who was Akio. He said something about war and how foolish it was, and yet how men must sometimes do things which were foolish, because it was not possible for any man to judge except for himself.
“War?” Sumie’s soft voice cried. “We don’t have to fight anybody. There is always another way of doing it.”
Whenever she spoke, Akio paused to listen to what she said, and he smiled peacefully as though it did not matter what she said so long as he heard her voice.
“That’s it, Sumie,” Bunji cried. “When it comes to that, you can always do something else. But nobody will want to fight us.”
Sumie sprang to her feet and took up the sake jug.
“Now don’t please talk about such things,” she coaxed them. “It is evil to speak of them. No, not war! My grandfather was killed before I was born, in our war in China, and then we grew so poor. Even though we won such a quick victory, he was no part of it. When everybody was out on the streets to welcome the soldiers home, my grandmother stayed at home and drew the screens shut and cried and cried…. See, I will sing while you drink! It is so nice to be happy!”
So she fetched a little lute and sat down and sang in a fresh pretty voice, a song of snow on plum blossoms. “I learned it in the village where I grew up,” she said. I-wan felt quiet and good here in this house which Mr. Muraki had forbidden to be. But here it was, all the same.
They said good-by at last and he and Bunji turned homeward. All the way I-wan kept thinking of the last moment when he saw Sumie bowing at the door. He thought of her smiling simplicity, her childlike eagerness, and of Akio standing beside her, looking so different from the Akio he had known.
“It’s a shame!” he burst out to Bunji.
“Yes,” Bunji agreed, “but it can’t be helped.”
“She is good,” I-wan insisted.
“Yes,” Bunji agreed again. “We all know that. But she was not fated to be born as Akio’s wife.”
“Do you believe people are born for each other?” I-wan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Bunji said simply, “my mother says so. Not for love, of course — that is another matter. But certainly two persons are born under certain stars to be man and wife. Then their marriage is successful and good. You see, that is really Akio’s fault. He won’t marry the woman who is his fate.”
“Do you know who she is?” I-wan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Bunji replied. “It is the daughter of a friend of my father’s. Everybody says she is good and dutiful. But Akio defies his fate. My father says that will bring ill luck on us all. Oh, it was very bad at first, especially because Akio himself is good — my father was surprised at his disobedience more than at anything.”
Home again in the quiet house, they nodded good night, and I-wan went to his own room. The screens had been drawn against the night. Suddenly he felt shut in by them. He opened them. The garden was full of mist, as white and enclosing as a screen itself. It shut him in alone.
He did not know when it was during the night that he first thought of seeing Tama. He had been asleep — no, he had not really been asleep. But suddenly after long lonely hours everything seemed reasonless and foolish. Only Akio was wise in his disobedience to an old man.
“Why should I not simply go to her?” he asked himself. He sat up. Why not? If he saw Tama once, he could go more easily to Yokohama.
The moment he thought of this it became a necessity. He knew where her room was, though he had never seen it. It was on the other side of the house, beyond the rooms of her parents. He knew that Mr. Muraki dreaded the night air. They had talked about it once, and Mr. Muraki had said that the night air was poisonous, especially to the old. And Tama had cried, “As for me, I always open my screens at night!” Madame Muraki had said in her even low voice, “Hush, Tama! It is not suitable for you to talk about the night.” Tama had said to him once by chance, “Last year on my birthday my father asked me what I wanted, and I said, to have for my own the room facing the little waterfall. So I sleep and wake to the sound of the water, splashing upon rocks.”
I-wan had thought of her listening to the falling water. Now, it occurred to him, in the misty darkness he could, if he stepped into the night, be guided toward Tama by that same sound. Why not? He thought of Akio taking his own quiet determined way. And at the same instant he knew he must do it.